


Do You Remember Her?

by Hydro1913



Category: Original Work
Genre: Depression, High School, Multi, Slice of Life, Supernatural Elements, fake girls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:40:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26516110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hydro1913/pseuds/Hydro1913
Summary: Do you remember-The static stabs through Aurora’s head.Remember?Remember what? Who?
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)
Kudos: 2





	1. Prologue

There’s always that muted noise in your mind and ears when you enter a school from which seems new to you but it’s really not when you see classmates you recognize, meeting new teachers you can’t help but be awkward around and going to new classrooms that you’ve always wondered if you could go into during orientation but you decide not to for fear of embarrassment. 

Lesley wonders if it’s because everyone is tired after three months of nonstop fun and screaming, vacationing and playing on mowed lawns in the summer sun with way too cold popsicles in hand, or if everyone’s sad to be here, not looking forward to homework and deadlines for ten straight months again, and they can already feel the boredom and tedious feelings settling in. It’s probably both. 

Her footsteps seem like thuds from far away, echoing, and there’s a really annoying strand of hair in her face, and she fidgets with her backpack strap as she distractedly paces while staring at her crumpled up schedule trying to remember all the different rooms, deliberately not looking up so she wouldn’t see anything except the paper and floor beneath. Her foot kicks away a wadded up paper ball, but not purposefully. 

Middle school. _Middle school._ It’s not _elementary school_ , it’s _middle school_ , and she’s older and more responsible, and there are more food choices she could make at lunch and more teachers teaching things and more subjects to learn and more clubs to join and more classes and there so many more possibilities and _Lesley has never felt so small._

Tiny. Miniature. Like she could be crushed like a tiny rodent in this space. How will she know what to do? How do other people know? How? How? Everything’s still muted. She hears the sounds of other students running in, the pounding of their footsteps, and she hears “Good morning”’s and hello’s and bells ringing.

Lesley wonders if anyone else is standing, anywhere else in this school, wondering what to say and _how to act_ and _how to learn_ , with all this going on. Do they know what they want to do? What clubs they want to join?

A trail of something catches her attention when she picks her head up and she turns, whipping some of her golden brown hair into the blouse she’s wearing, tickling against her back but she could care less honestly when she sees -

A girl walking past her in the opposite direction, with threads of coral hue lining her face, her eyes scrunched as she peers at her own schedule. Her eyes were a brilliant shade of turquoise blue, her skin fair, and even with the frowning expression on her face, Lesley could honestly say she was pretty.

Then the girl turns and looks up, and their gazes meet. 

As soon the brilliant cyan found Lesley, it was as if a barrier had shattered and sound came flowing in, bringing shouts, yells, and hollers of names, and greetings, but she didn’t even notice, captivated in the other girl’s gaze, and she doesn’t know how long they stood there for - it could have been two seconds, three seconds, _half-a-second_ \- but it felt like forever. Forever, drowning in a sea full of air. 

“Rory!”

And then everything came crashing back in, the barrier, the paper in Lesley’s hands, the feeling of smallness - _she hadn’t even realized that it was gone at all_. The girl turns her head to someone in the crowd, someone Lesley couldn’t make out due to the jostling of the hallway crowd, but there’s a spark of recognition in her gaze, and then she steps towards them without another look back at Lesley. 

Lesley stands there watching her go.

And then she looks down at the paper and sets off in a direction that may be wrong, but at this point, she doesn't care. She doesn’t tear her eyes away from the page for anything until she realizes she hasn’t hit anyone or anything for the past few minutes and looks up from her schedule - into a heavy, gray mist. 

Without even feeling the slightest confused - though she should be - her schedule drops to her side and she continues walking into the fog...

Lesley’s eyes snap open and she stares into something that looks like the inside of a nostril, and it takes a while for her to realize what has happened, and she sits up and gently nudges away the spirit horse’s face. 

“Ah, you’re awake!” Lesley turns to see her friend, Pascale, sitting beside her with a rickety picnic basket in hand. She turns up to look at the never changing gray sky.

It’s the fifth day after falling into the afterlife.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Someone died.”

Snow.

There’s a lot of it.

Those are the first two sentences that greet Aurora’s sleep addled brain, which was due to staying up until some time a little past two trying to squeeze in the last second possible to complete her science project which she blew off all break. 

Aurora takes said snow and stomps on it with her worn out sneakers. 

Alexis laughs when Aurora takes away her sneakers and there are streaks of brown across the blinding white.

“Do you clean your shoes, like, ever?”

“Nah.” Aurora scuffs her sneakers against the pavement, trying to get the excess snow off. “I’ll do it some other time.”

She can tell by the way Alexis rolls her eyes from the corner of her eyesight that she knows Aurora won’t.

The subject is quickly dropped when suddenly Alexis’s dark braided hair is assaulted by a flurry of white from behind.

Aurora, quickly catching on, starts laughing and shot a thumbs up at Gemina and Meinwen, the power twins, who were equally showing off purple jackets, earmuffs, and gloves. “Nicely done!”

Alexis doesn’t even bother trying to pout with her red lips. She bends down to the ground and slips - Aurora stifles a laugh - but manages to put together a sloppy heap of snow and throw it at Meinwen’s head, which the twin dodged.

Aurora’s best friend grumbles as she tries to wipe the wetness from her hair. Gemina and Meinwen send her matching obnoxious grins.

“Well, good morning,” Alexis says, sending the twins one more exasperated glare, then continuing to walk forward. 

They all fall into step behind her, and Aurora tilts her head up to look at the sky, letting out a breath and watching the faint breath appear from her mouth. There are approximately five different shaped clouds she can see against the cold blue.

Alexis Danielson is fifteen, cooks a mean pie, and doesn’t take bull from anybody.

Gemina Carpenter is fifteen, plays pranks, and shares about fifty different handshakes with her sister.

Meinwen Carpenter is Gemina’s twin, younger by two minutes, has an encyclopedia for useless information but actually is smart, and reminds Gemina how the fourth handshake is done every day.

And Aurora Abner is fifteen, plays soccer, has friends like Alexis, Gemina and Meinwen, and other good people.

And…

She watches the way Alexis’s lips dance in the harsh sunshine reflecting off the snow.

There’s something she can’t admit, not even to herself.  
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Tristan Harkwood.

See, that’s four syllables right there that can spark anxiety into anyone’s soul at this high school.

Aurora can remember the day he first arrived. 

“That’s Tristan Harkwood,” she recalled Alexis whispering in her ear as they watched him walk slowly down the hall. “He’s new here.”

He made a lasting impression.

Not long after she and Alexis started gossiping about him, his eyes met theirs and -

Well, some things were better left undescribed. The short story is that his green, too green, eyes were unsettling.

If he had friends, they were very few and never lasted. As everyone got older, Aurora often heard friends and her soccer team whisper about him being a serial killer, and he tricked his victims into doing study sessions in an old, abandoned house before he kicked their bucket.

Well, serial killer or not, he was a lone wolf, and Aurora and Alexis talked with him sparingly.

Today, though, it seemed different. There was a wild tinge to his gaze. Something darker and gloomier under his forest of bangs. 

His posture is slumped as he walks past Aurora, and she can feel her heart spike when he almost nearly shoves Camillo Deas into a locker.

“Watch it, mister!” The famous albino whirls around to start after him, his group of mean-looking friends in tow. “What the hell is your problem?”

Tristan stops, turning as if to look back at them all, but Aurora’s attention is broken when Alexis suddenly exclaims, “Val!” and she’s running from Aurora’s side to hug a shorter girl whose expression reads bloody murder.

Aurora hurries over to join them, cracking a smile at seeing one of her other childhood friends (Alexis and the twins are her childhood friends too). “Hey, Val, how was the break?”

Val rolled her eyes. “Boring. My family lugged me around to family gatherings all week. Why isn’t winter break longer? I wanted to catch up on that one book I was reading.” 

Aurora, Alexis, and the twins murmured in assent. 

Meinwen chimes in, “Did anyone watch that new episode of that show with the dolphin?”

They start up their after-break chatter, with lots of cut ins and rewinds. Aurora looks back to where she last saw Tristan, only to find him heading into class already, Camillo and his gang standing where he bumped into them, goofing around as if nothing happened.

She frowns to herself before she cuts back in on the conversation, stopping when the bell rings.

Aurora starts off to class, knowing Alexis will catch up, and trails her hands across the locker doors - knows one of them will be a jerk and will cut her hand, but oh well.

Sure enough, Alexis does come after her, and they walk to class together. Aurora chances a look at her best friend, before she lets them brush sides.

Man, she’s a loser.  
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Aurora shoots a practiced grin and nods towards their teacher as they walk into science and to their desks. Alexis puts her back in her chair and sidles over to some of her fellow tennis players. 

Putting down her bag in her seat as well, Aurora notices Tristan in the back corner, hood over his eyes. His face is shadowed and the people around him were giving him a wide berth, possibly wider as usual. She feels bad for whoever sits next to him.

She plays Geo Dash for a bit and gives a small nod when someone asks if she’s done the homework for History.

The bell rings, and two seconds later the door swings open with a bang, making Aurora look up and seeing Camillo and Friends come tumbling in. One of them trips over the door stop and goes sprawling. Camillo busts out a laugh that sounds like a dying cow.

Aurora can feel everyone, including herself, in the room breathe out an exasperated sigh before she goes back to her Game Over screen. The teacher eyes the group who was currently doubling over guffawing before she just ignores them all and goes to continue whatever she was writing on the whiteboard.

After a while, the sound of the speaker comes on to begin morning announcements, and Aurora pauses playing her game to listen.

It was the usual announcements. Aurora was tempted to zone right out again. “Chances to hand in your field trip form are getting less by the minute…”

Alexis finally sits down and listens in like she always does, and Aurora wonders yet again what would happen if responsible Alexis wasn’t around to help her in life. She’d most likely be dead.

The announcement was crisp, monotone and to the point, and maybe if Aurora wasn’t such an idiot, she would’ve noticed that that wasn’t right. By the time she noticed, the speaker suddenly cut off, fading into heart-pounding static.

Confusion envelops her and she looks around, wondering if anyone else had noticed, only to grow even more puzzled as people look at each other with what seems to be worried glances.

She looks over to where Camillo has roosted, and sees his jaw slack, seemingly mid-sentenced.

Tristan’s head is bowed.

“What...what do you mean?”

Alexis’s shaky voice is what makes Aurora turn to her and feel the chill run down her spine. 

Her best friend’s eyes were filled with unshed tears. Nearly shaking. Her whole body was shaking. She’s half rising out of her chair. 

“No… you’re kidding, right?”

Aurora can barely hear her; she just realized there was a ringing in her ears, one that blocks out the increasingly loud voices of her classmates. It starts hurting, fast. She winces.

The teacher’s talking, failing to sound placating, and Aurora can see a shining in her eyes. She’s crying too, but why?

Alexis doesn’t seem to calm down, and her chair screeching across the floor makes Aurora’s head pound like a sledgehammer.

“Can I call my mom?”

“Honey-”

“I wanna go home!”

“Alex?”

Her friend doesn’t even hear Aurora. Her gaze is crazed, tears streaming down her cheeks like waterfalls. 

Aurora knows she gets like this but…

This one seemed worse than all the rest. 

She reaches out again, trying to grab the other’s arm, only for her to push it away.

“Why would she do such a thing…?”

“Who are you talking about-”

Her eyes grow hard and Aurora feels a pit in her stomach open up.

“Joking? At a time like this? What’s wrong with you?”

The anger, fuelled by confusion and panic because now she can feel everyone’s eyes on her, comes without preamble.

“What is your problem?”

“This isn’t some joke!”

“What joke?”

The look on Alexis’s face takes on a shadow of incredulity, and the ringing cuts in Aurora’s ear cuts off the rest of her shouting.

“L…” Aurora has to block her eyes from the pain, she feels tears in her eyes because of it. Alexis is crying too, gripping at their desk.

“...dead. She can’t be dead. I need to go. Now.”

Aurora’s eyesight is nearly impaired now, covered over by gray murk, but she still sees Alexis push through every classmate roughly, cutting as fast as she could to the front of the classroom.

Camillo appears before her, but Aurora isn’t sure how he managed to get there. “Hey, wait a sec-”

She shoves past him without so much as a word, rushing out before the teacher could stop her.

Everyone looks between the swinging door and the albino student with his arms still half raised.

The announcement fades back in.

“Any bereaved can come to the office to discuss the situation.”

Chatter breaks out, harsh and grating against Aurora’s head; she winces. 

What the hell just happened? Was that normal? Why couldn’t she hear anything? Why was Alexis crying? Why so hard, and why so hysterically? She got like that, but never like this-

But then there’s a hand on her shoulder and wrenching her back, and she’s looking up into the green eyes of Tristan Harkwood, and she’s never felt more confused or understanding when he says, softly, though it was earth-shattering to Aurora’s ears,

“Someone died.”


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pointless.

Lesley’s seen a lot of strange things. 

For example, the time she found a pink-haired girl’s eyes and felt like she was falling into a pit of nothing but feathers.

Or when she first saw Tristan with his gloomy eyes, smile.

Or when spiritual beings, gods, came to her and said she was cursed.

She wasn’t sure what to say when she saw Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States of America, holding a piña colada in his hand.

On the beach. In a beach chair. With an umbrella and a towel and everything.

Was there even sun? Lesley looks up at the sky, an endless mass of gray. The same weather since she got here.

She ended up wandering from where she’s staying with her new friend and found herself here, standing on the beach in some gray sand and the air smelling like fish and watching Abraham Lincoln argue with George Washington. 

The First President of the United States of America was standing, his bare feet submerging into the sand and hands on his hips, wearing a shirt that looked like it was about to burst on his large frame and having sunglasses perched on his head.

This couldn’t get stranger.

“You had the last slice last time! It was my turn!” Washington was fuming. 

Lincoln swirled his drink around with a straw. “I’m afraid I wasn’t very clear. It was my turn.”

Are they talking about...pizza? Or pie?

Lesley was only here to talk about the afterlife, not see a throwdown between two U.S. presidents. She can’t say if she’s enjoying it or not.

The argument seemed to have ended when Lincoln threw his now empty piña colada cup at Washington’s head and the latter went off cursing. George Washington, first President of the United States of America. Cursing.

She decided maybe she should just talk before Lincoln could throw a tropical drink at her too.

“Uh, excuse me…?” she tries as the former president leaned over to retrieve the glass from the sand.

He looks up at her with a tilt to his brow.

“Why, hello there. Have we met?”

Lesley shook her head, feeling a bit dazed, but not as much as the first day here. The first day she was here, she freaked because she saw a T-Rex and Pascale ended up having to calm her down and saying she’s not gonna die because -well, she’s already dead.

“No, we haven’t, sir - I came here five days ago.”

The man’s eyebrows went up. “Ah, you’re that girl who - who, oh.”

The silence was a little awkward and Lesley shot a sheepish grin at the man. She hoped he wasn’t touchy on...that stuff.

“Well,” the man started again, regaining composure, and Lesley breathed an internal sigh of relief. “I am Abraham Lincoln. You have heard of me. What’s your name?”

“Lesley.”

“Hello, Lesley. What can I do for you today?”

“Well, I was looking around, if you don’t mind. Just wanted to know exactly what this place is.”

The former President’s eyes narrow at her request, and she can feel a stone in her stomach. Maybe she shouldn’t be asking this. Was it a break in some rules she didn’t know about? Pascale hadn’t said anything about it…

Lesley thinks back to a girl with pink eyes tripping over her own dilapidated looking picnic basket.

Then again, Pascale didn’t talk much about things that made sense.

“Is that okay with you?” she adds on hesitatingly.

The strange look disappears from Lincoln’s eyes, replaced by the same inquiring look as before. Lesley’s little granite piece in her gut doesn’t go away.

“There is not much to say,” he says slowly, tilting the object in his hands from side to side. Lesley watches as clumps of gray sand come spilling out. “This is the afterlife. I’m sure you heard of that already.”

She looks up and tries to stifle a yelp at him still staring firmly at her. “Uh...yeah.”

“There is no start, no beginning. Anything on Earth that dies comes to this place. None of us can get out. It’s aimless and endless. Finding your friends and family could take forever; you could appear anywhere in this world and wander on for centuries, until you fade away for good.”

Lesley stares at one gray hair on the man’s head. Well that was heavy. It didn’t seem like something to come from the guy who gave the Gettysburg Address. But, then again…

She looks out at the gray ocean in front of them, not a single ripple in the water. Silent. 

Did Lincoln ever see the ocean back when he was alive?

She looks at the piña colada in his hands. It’s already filling up again, with another liquid. Lesley wonders how substances could die. Expiration? Being consumed? Thrown away?

After two hundred years of staring at an ocean that never moves, drinking expired liquid, cold sand under your feet, Lesley could think she would feel the same way.

“Is there anything else you want to know?”

Lincoln has one eyebrow raised. Lesley looks back at him, and takes a breath in.

“What are the gods?”

She feels him freeze for a fraction of a second.

“The gods...they are the creators of these worlds. They mandate the laws of the universe. And they are the ones who have cursed you, for their own entertainment.”

Lesley stands there, looking out into the fog, and feels a weight on her shoulders. She knew all that. Or...she didn’t know all that. She just had a feeling.

“So we wander here forever?” she murmurs, knowing she’s disregarding the second answer. She doesn’t know how to respond to it, his reaction included.

Lincoln nods, slowly, with a somber air. “That is the plan, yes.”

There’s silence for a moment, before Lesley holds her hand out to shake his hand, and then she leaves.

To stay here, in this colorless world. Forever and ever.

Lesley looks up at the metal sheet above her, a void of nothing.

She doesn’t have a choice.

Pointless.


End file.
